Title: One bad day
Author: Satan's Sidekick aka Connie
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine, nobody would pay for it anyway.
Summary: Ficlet. Season 6. Buffy's relationship with Spike is far from healthy.
A/N: Putting angst into something constructive.
On good days:
She tells herself that Spike is harmless. He has a chip in his head and he can't hurt anyone (with one exception). She tells herself that Spike isn't dangerous even though that's not the issue and it might not be entirely true anyway. She tells herself that the last time is really the last, and sometimes she almost believes it.
She smiles and laughs at the right intervals. She's nice most of the time and she's pissed off when people expect her to be. She looks at her sister, her friends and they're all pretending that everything's okay. Like Willow hadn't wrenched her back from heaven, and maybe like she hadn't ever died. While she pretends that she's okay, her friends are pretending that they believe her. For a while, the little performance is enough to keep her going. She would eat ice cream with Dawn, watch late night movies with Willow, and she'd talk to Xander about his engagement, smiling and laughing at the right intervals, being nice. Being pissed off.
Then one uneventful day she'll look in the mirror and she'll be looking into the void again. There's something missing and something dead inside her. Just like him. Suddenly, without warning, her good day has turned into a bad day.
On her bad days, she visits him.
Inevitably, it would start the same way. She'd walk to the crypt with that numb feeling (rigor mortis can be a bitch). Even though she walks purposefully and there was no other possible conclusion, there's always the slight confusion and surprise when the time comes for her to get dressed.
Did I just...?
The door would bang open and Spike would be there of course, smoking, drinking or on the bed, naked. He'd call her "Slayer" and make some obscene sex euphemism. She'd respond with something witty, or maybe just a sigh. Spike's suggestive leers make her feel repulsed and aroused at the same time. But Spike, he makes her feel... Sometimes there is small talk. More often, there isn't.
The irony just kills her.
Spike asks her if she trusts him. He doesn't understand: this was never about trust. When she's handcuffed to the bed she confesses that she's not in control, that she's out of control and she likes it that way.
It'll be our secret.
Other times, Spike is the one who is evil, dirty, wrong. He's a shadow that she needs pin down and dominate. She imagines staking him there, his body writhing under hers, his head drawn back and eyes half shut. Right there, just above his nipple. At the moment of impact, his eyes would open in pain or ecstasy, and maybe he'd whisper that he loved her. And then the pressure, the hotness, the secret will be gone, and she'll be left with a pile of ashes.
She'll be left with Nothing.
Spike's the Big Bad, but he's the only battle that she hasn't worked out how to win. Maybe it's not a battle that she can win.
Every night Buffy has her own little apocalypse, and every time the world comes crashing down, she dies. Just a little more.
On Wednesday, Buffy wakes up and looks at herself in the mirror. Today is a good day. But good days become bad days and bad days only become bad days until her whole life has become one bad day. And when the sun sets, she knows that Spike is waiting.